G a l á p a g o s
- A
M e l l o t r o n i c
S u i t e -
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 31:12] all rights reserved
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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link:
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)
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"A Mellotronic Suite.
One of the most eccentric and quaint Melgaço works.
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It evolved from a similar instrument, the Chamberlin, but could be mass-produced more effectively. The instrument works by pulling a section of magnetic tape across a head. Different portions of the tape can be played to access different sounds. Became more popular after the Beatles used it on several tracks. It was subsequently adopted by the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Genesis (plus Yes, Pink Floyd) and became a notable instrument in progressive rock. In addition to such names, I mention sporadic masterly utilizations by Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Procol Harum, Os Mutantes, David Bowie, Tangerine Dream, Radiohead etc.
The way the composer and multi-instrumentalist O.M. ´reinvents´ the mellotron (under the aegis of contemporaneity) is indelibly intriguing! Both the avant-classical daring as the open interventions (sometimes flirting with rock, sometimes with - the authentic - fusion, with jazz etc). Sure, the occasional use of percussion (at one point - frantic/strikingly > the drums - to another point - ritualistic/medieval > the barrels - or - ecstatic/supernal > the bells -) & strings (the only passage in which arise, they remind me of the Mahavishnu Orchestra in Ponty period) also creates an interesting balance to the Piece. Simultaneously (I call your attention to the variety of timbres) ´Galápagos´ is a revival and futuristic; from my prism, a Suite that´s above time´n´space. One of the most hallucinated and bizarre Melgaço works. In two words: ´Extravagantly Stunning´!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, 906 km (563 mi) west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part. Are famed for their vast number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
Galápagos is also the eleventh novel written by American author Kurt Vonnegut. The novel questions the merit of the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. The title is both a reference to the islands on which part of the story plays out, and a tribute to Charles Darwin on whose theory Vonnegut relies to reach his own conclusions.
I think this Melgacian album sets a conceptional seesaw movement between Darwin and Vonnegut.
>> Starting from Charles:
´But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.´ Are his words.
´Galápagos´ begins with the wind blowing. I think you understand me, right?
[Inter alia - the following Darwinian excerpt seems to define each Melgacian sound Piece: ´We cannot fathom the marvelous complexity of an organic being; but on the hypothesis here advanced this complexity is much increased. Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm -- a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.´]
>> Starting from Kurt:
The Melgacian ´sound story´ could be narrated by a ghost a million years in the future. Let us listen to the album: the unutterable atmosphere; a certain sense of supernaturality; antipodes impressions; a matte - opaque - nebula - vaporous mastering (in other bars, it´s cutting, ripping: prickly). In this regard, the choice of an instrument such as the mellotron was impeccable, spectacular.
Thus we´re led to a ´post-humanity´. And what is responsible for this? This way we anchor in the following scenario: the Man's greatest enemy is its huge brain (let us think a little about how this may be metaphorical too and due to this you´ll draw your own conclusions). The brain as responsible for human misery. Who knows: annihilation (self destruction)? And the thesis is not completely devoid of meaning: from the point of view of natural selection, we agree that our behavior is not always the most efficient. The serpent's egg of world wars (nowadays more unpredictable under the carapace of terrorism and more than that: it´s anyone's guess: the - even powdered - use of nuclear weapons - under unimaginable conditions - is something scary to any dream of a civilized world); nature degradation with catastrophic effects; technological exacerbation that increasingly forces each of us to redefine what is and will be called ´human´ and so on. What most distinguishes man (Homo s-a-p-i-e-n-s) from other animals, is a ´double-edged sword´. No more words.
Melgaço - here - is the only kind of possible and probable misanthrope really valid (remember the figure of speech: Galápagos are a cluster of islands and the last notes of the composition are minimalists in their echoes): one who does not ´hate´ so much the human condition but that feels permanently disappointed by it. Not the man who repudiates his neighbor, but who remains restive before the fact that the human being is customarily so short of its potential. ´It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.´ Through these notions, nothing more selfless than the stimulus generated by such misanthropy, do you agree? It´s no coincidence: this is one of the vital features of every great artist.
P l u s
>> Starting from the ... ´stars´ (?):
Interestingly, also ´Galápagos´ oftentimes sounds touchingly
´liturgical´. I'm not surprised because O.M. - he´s a paradoxical artist. Again: the great - they are.
This perception may point to a North a little more hopeful. On this side, I do analogy with the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The ´presence of mind´ would be the same. Words are sung during the late movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus. They were taken from the ´Ode to Joy´, a poem written by Friedrich Schiller. But by the side of O.M. would be therefore an ´Ode to Hope´. Hope: I do not think by any prophetism, this would not be a sleight of hand (this is not the Melgacian position, certainly). But, before we all ghosts, ritually Otacílio perhaps might suggest that instead of humanity being the key to the own extinction: there´s an ontological responsibility to hold the reins of a positive sense of evolutivity. Developability that highlights a mankind more and more collectivist/collaborative in terms of what we understand (beyond science) as ´selection´ and ´natural´. ´In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.´ Hence the irony (and so the originator of the transubstantializing Suite would be implemented the amalgamation of all the topics that I tried to bring us so far): the remedy - if is used in the wrong dose - can kill. However the origin of the medicine - that will save us from the poisonous effects - it's the very poison. At least yet, never too late to reiterate: in brief - in the correct dose, the same medicament has the property of healing. Apotheosisly Melgaço evokes Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim or (better known by the pseudonym) Paracelsus. ´Dosis sola facit venenum´.
Between this and that:
some quotes by Vonnegut are an almost perfect translation of the sonic universe here on focus. An example: ´I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.´ One difference is that Otacílio sometimes, volcanically & subversively experimenter, goes over. And yes t-h-i-s is pure incantation. Hocus Pocus! Paraphrasing Charles Darwin: 'Such two hands have surely worked throughout the universe.´" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - The voyage of the Beagle brought the survey ship HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy, to the Galápagos on 15 September 1835 to survey approaches to harbours. The captain and others on board, including his companion, the young naturalist Charles Darwin, made observations on the geology and biology on Chatham, Charles, Albemarle and James islands before they left on 20 October to continue on their round-the-world expedition. Primarily a geologist at the time, Darwin was impressed by the quantity of volcanic craters they saw, later referring to the archipelago as "that land of craters." His study of several volcanic formations over the 5 weeks he stayed in the islands, led to several important geological discoveries, including the first, correct explanation for how volcanic tuff is formed. Darwin noticed the mockingbirds differed between islands, though he thought the birds now known as Darwin's finches were unrelated to each other, and did not bother labelling them by island. Nicholas Lawson, acting Governor of Galápagos for the Republic of the Equator, met them on Charles Island, and as they walked to the prison colony, told Darwin the tortoises differed from island to island. Towards the end of the voyage, Darwin speculated that the distribution of the mockingbirds and the tortoises might "undermine the stability of Species". When specimens of birds were analysed on his return to England, it was found that many apparently different kinds of birds were species of finches, which were unique to islands. These facts were crucial in Darwin's development of his theory of natural selection explaining evolution, which was presented in The Origin of Species;
II - Later Mellotron models such as the M400, the best selling model, dispensed with the accompaniments and some sound selection controls in order to be used by touring musicians. The instrument became less popular in the 1980s due to the introduction of polyphonic synthesizers and samplers, despite a number of high profile uses from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and XTC.
Production of the Mellotron ceased in 1986, but it regained popularity in the 1990s, and was used by several notable bands. This led to the resurrection of the original manufacturer, Streetly Electronics. In 2007, Streetly produced the M4000, which combined the layout of the M400 with the bank selection of earlier models;
III - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922 – 2007) was an American author. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published fourteen novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...
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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.
